How loud should a 200 watt 210 combo be?

I have an ampeg 210sp, and it's not that loud at all. I know these are bad comparisons, but my friend's 30 watt guitar amp can get ear piercingly loud compared to mine. Is it the amp, or what? I use stock pick ups on my MIM J & some dinky low quality cord, but I doubt that's it.

There's 2 inputs, one for 0 and one for -15. I'm not sure if my pups are active or passive, but maybe I'm plugged into the wrong input? Or maybe amps of this size just arn't loud.. :/

1. bass amps have to be more powerful than guitar amps, because low frequencies need more power to be heard at the same perceived volume. People suggest to have 4 to 10 times the power of the guitar amp.

2. The MIM J is passive, so you should use the 0dB input.

3. The output level of a passive Fender should be high enough to drive the Ampeg to full power (I played a MIM J through an Ampeg BA 115 recently and had no problem)

Finally: I haven't played the Ampeg BA 210, but the BA 115 is fairly loud for it's size, so I suppose the same is true for the BA 210, but just don't expect too much from a 200W 210 bass amp.

Your J bass is passive. The easy way to tell if your bass is active or passive is - does it need a battery? If the answer is no, it's passive. If the answer is yes, it can be active (their mught be a passive bypass, but if the battery is there it's clearly intended to be active or switchable!)

Here's a thought, can you get to the wires that feed the two speakers??? Are they both connected??? Once in the studio, our guitarist was using a 2 x 12 Marshall Valvestate Combo, whihc even on full whack was quite quiet! He'd used this one before and it was much louder.

We had a look over it, the dry/effect signal knob was full on dry (the signal from his guitar - oh, that's a thought, is there an effects loop blend control?). When we checked the back only one speaker wire was connected, the other was just dangling! It is just a push fit spade connector. You might wanna check yours!